For Some With Autism, Jobs to Match Their Talents

Steen B. Iversen tests mobile phones for the Danish telecommunications firm TDC. Before landing his job two and a half years ago, Iversen, 50, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, spent more than 12 years looking for work. “It’s always been somewhat traumatizing,” he said. “I have had jobs, but I always got fired. People would laugh about me behind my back and laugh at me to my face. Those problems have more or less been a problem for me from childhood.”

In the working world, Iversen said, his biggest problem was communication. “Most of the time it simply was that people didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand them,” he said.

Iversen works for a remarkable Danish company, Specialisterne (“The Specialists”), that is improving the futures of many families by opening up job opportunities for people with Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioning autism who have historically found themselves excluded from employment, largely because they don’t fit in with workplace norms.
Specialisterne was founded by Thorkil Sonne. Eleven years ago, Sonne was a successful executive at TDC when his youngest child, Lars, then 3, was diagnosed with autism. “I had the perfect career and the perfect family,” he recalled. “It was so shocking to realize that one of our family members had a lifelong disability. As parents we wanted to make the best possible future for all of our children, not just the two who were non-disabled. So we had to come up with a new plan for our family’s future.”

Sonne and his wife thought about what would be best for their son. “What will make Lars a happy man when we are not there anymore?” they asked themselves. “We thought,” Sonne said, “If others could appreciate his skills and respect his special personality in a meaningful and productive job, then we could go to the grave with a good conscience.”

With Specialisterne, Sonne has created something that has gone beyond giving a helping hand to his son. To date, the company has hired 35 people with autism to work as consultants for other companies, and is now training 46 others. Perhaps more important, its model is gaining momentum. Sonne has been contacted by people from 60 countries who want to adapt the work locally. He has expanded to Iceland and Scotland and is planning to spread to a half dozen additional countries within the next few years, including Poland, Germany, Ireland and the United States. Specialisterne has also inspired a similar Chicago-based non-profit called Aspiritech.

The idea for Specialisterne came to Sonne after he got involved with an autism support organization and met scores of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (A.S.D.). There are large variations within this spectrum: it includes people who are significantly challenged as well as some who, on the surface, seem perfectly average and are often very intelligent. People with A.S.D. have problems imagining other people’s feelings and grasping social contexts; they struggle or may be unable to read social cues like facial expressions or sarcasm. They usually have narrowly defined interests, engage in repetitive behaviors, and are resistant to changes in routine. And they are highly sensitive to stress and vulnerable to depression.

Thorkil SonneA sketch, right, of an index page in a book of maps, drawn from memory by the 7-year-old Lars Sonne, who has autism, showed a talent for visual reproduction.

Nobody knows what causes autism, or how prevalent it is. About one percent of children in the United States are diagnosed with A.S.D. Only a small percentage of adults with autism are employed full-time in either the United States or Europe. This is a problem that extends to people with many other disabilities, as well. In the United States in 2010, of 14.7 million people between the ages of 16 and 64 with a disability, only 4.2 million — less than one in three — were employed.

As Sonne got to know numerous youths and adults with A.S.D., he discovered how unhappy many were. They shared painful stories about being rejected for jobs or fired. They spoke of being overwhelmed by anxiety at work and having to quit. Many had given up hope of finding work where they would feel comfortable and accepted. “One man had a good IT education and had applied for hundreds of jobs and been to a handful of job interviews,” Sonne recalled. “But a job interview is about chemistry and people like him flunk within the first few minutes — so they never get to tell what they’re good at.”

Part of the problem is that people rarely think about disability unless they are directly affected by it. And while many business people worry about the costs of accommodating employees with disabilities, few consider the potential contributions of people who are not “normal” or “neurotypical,” as they say in the autism community.

“I think that everyone has resources that society can benefit from under the right circumstances,” explains Sonne. However, among those with high-functioning autism, he notes, it is easier to make this case. Sonne saw that Lars, at age 7, had an unusual aptitude for copying details from books by memory. Having spent years working in the field of information technology, he knew that the strengths that often come with A.S.D. — such as a talent for intense focus and concentration, an ability to recognize patterns, spot minute deviances and recall details, and a perseverance for repetitive tasks — could be advantages in jobs where consistency and accuracy are paramount. Software testing and data conversion and management were obvious examples.

When Sonne set up Specialisterne, he took an unusual tack: he decided that, rather than pursue business by appealing primarily to corporate responsibility, or by offering low-cost labor, he would position his consultants as superior workers and charge premium rates for their services. This approach, which is clearly limited to a subset of people with autism, seems to be working.

Sonne calls it the “dandelion philosophy.” Depending on your point of view, a dandelion is either a valuable herb — a source of iron and vitamin A, with many medicinal qualities — or a weed that invades your garden. “A weed is a beautiful plant in an unwanted place,” he says. “An herb is the same plant where it is wanted. Who decides if something is a weed or an herb? Society does.”

Since Sonne wanted companies to see people with autism as herbs, not weeds, he created a five-month program to carefully evaluate candidates’ learning and behavior profiles, build their confidence, and prepare them for success. (Danish municipalities subsidize this training program, a wise policy. In the U.S., it’s estimated that for every dollar the government spends on vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities the Social Security Administration saves $7.)

Sonne knew that many people with A.S.D. love working with Lego. So he approached the Danish company to develop an assessment program using Lego’s Mindstorm Robot technology. Employees are asked to build and program robots, a process that reveals things like how well they process instructions, whether they will ask a question if they don’t understand something, and how they react when asked to work with a colleague. “We found that people could show us who they were much better than they could tell us about themselves,” he said. (Specialistern’s approach is in keeping with the model of “Customized Employment,” advocated by the U.S. Office of Disabilities Employment Policy.)

Related

All the candidates who go through the training and assessment gain valuable knowledge about themselves and what is necessary for them to excel in the workplace. But only some are a good match for the work Specialisterne offers. Sonne says his biggest challenge is balancing business and social goals. This year, the company will hire a quarter of its trainees as consultants. The typical workload is 20 to 25 hours a week. Most consultants are placed in the offices of Specialisterne’s corporate clients, but some are uncomfortable being sent offsite. Specialisterne has a staff of 20 who provide ongoing management support to corporate clients, which include Microsoft, Oracle, Deloitte and Nokia. Last year, the company earned a small profit on $3 million in revenues. Sonne says they’re on track to grow revenues this year by 40 percent. (Sonne sold the company for one Danish crown to the Specialisterne Foundation, a nonprofit organization he created to spread the model globally.)

After two and a half years working with Specialisterne, Iversen says he feels a greater sense of security — largely because he feels understood. His manager at TDC, Johnni Jensen, is pleased with his work.

Specialisterne’s consultants are meticulous, Jensen said. “You know if you have to run 85 tests, they have done the 85 tests,” he explained. “They haven’t done 80 tests and taken a short cut.” This can translate to big savings. A bug found in the production phase of a software product can cost 50 to 100 times more to fix than one caught in the design or testing phase. As a manager, the relationship has brought Jensen new challenges. He had to learn to communicate precisely and clearly, to be mindful of his tone of voice, and to pay attention to his consultant’s individual needs. “One is afraid of not doing things well enough for us,” he told me. “Another can’t say no; he won’t stop himself and will stay very late. I have to manage their workloads carefully.”

He has also discovered that a person with autism may not be very social, but still like to socialize. “One of our consultants doesn’t say hello in the morning or goodbye in the evening,” he explained. “But every Friday morning we eat breakfast together at work, and he likes to join in and laugh with us.”

Because of the experience, he says he has become more open to people with disabilities. “I didn’t have anything against them before, but I now see you have to look for special things in people,” he said. “It’s easier to accept people’s differences if you can see them more fully.”

Lars, now 14, hopes to work as a Lego Mindstorm trainer in Specialisterne for three years after he graduates from school. Sonne believes that by the time Lars is ready to start his career, more companies in Denmark will be willing to consider his abilities and not just his disabilities.

On Wednesday, I’ll respond to comments and provide examples of some American companies that are opening their workplaces to people with disabilities. I’ll also explain why companies that learn to accommodate differences may be better poised to meet the challenges of the 21st century.